The blades of a wind turbine are typically designed to be replaced about every 20 years. This means that, as wind energy becomes more popular, more and more of these hulking fiberglass structures will be discarded, and many of them could end up buried in the ground. To encourage recycling the blades instead, one research team has developed a binding resin—the ingredient that holds their fibrous material together—that can be transformed into more valuable substances.
Wind turbine blades are typically 170 feet long, roughly the length of an Olympic-sized swimming pool. But because bigger turbines can capture more energy, some offshore wind farms are investing in taller installations that can sport blades nearly twice as long. When these massive blades are damaged or reach the end of their lifetime, they must be retired from use. By 2050, experts estimate that more than two million tons of blade material could be decommissioned each year.
To solve this problem, recycling wind turbine blades must become easier and more profitable. Several companies in the renewable energy industry—including Siemens Gamesa, General Electric and Vestas—are working on this issue, Cooperman says. “Anything that makes it easy to recycle, that makes it less costly to recycle, increases the chances of more recycling happening,” she notes.
When the time came to recycle their experimental fiberglass panels, the researchers had a few options. In one, they could crush up the panels and add an additional polymer, producing a plastic material that could be transformed into other objects through injection molding. This short-fiber composite might become the basis of computer housings or other objects but would not be particularly valuable, Dorgan says.